Radiosport 2.0 is not taking your baby (but it is giving it a new lease on contesting life)

context: Kyle AA0Z invited me to a roundtable discussion on his youtube channel] this evening, and it stirred up some discord and stoked the ongoing controversy grinding old-school contesters’ gears since his W1DED interview, the K5ZD N6MJ KL9A contester panel followup, his reaction, and the 2024 hamvention contesting forum call-out by K1AR. I wrote this to try to help clear some murky air, and posted to the Ham Radio Crash Course discord #radiosport-contesting channel where the fun was taking place. To a regular reader, this might seem out of place, so sorry about that. I hope you can read through that, and gather some ideas and discourse on the subject of contest modernization i.e. RadioSport2.0.

also long time no see lol

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ok i got fired up and started typing and wrote a bunch so sorry, but #offmychest…

I wasn’t a big fan of the 1984ing on the stream bc i wanna hear out and debate the hot takes. During the stream I was typing that whole time with @QROdaddy (W4IPC) because he got quieted and I wanted to hear the discord (haha pun). I really don’t like echo chambers, and I really don’t like stuff that doesn’t take holistic perspectives from all points of view, so I think we, the radiosport2.0 community need to take some better care hearing it out. Whether it’s from current youth, young and old, seasoned or noob contesters, non-contesters, or QRZ lol. With that being said, here’s my dissertation on the whole radiosport thing that’s been bouncing in my head since 2011 (https://www.arrl.org/news/youth-hamradio-fun-what-is-radiosport-and-why-do-we-do-it) and opined since 2016 (https://n0ssc.com/posts/320-contest-modernization also rip cqcontest.net but today’s is https://contestonlinescore.com)

I think we want the same thing – we contesters all want to contest, and for there to be people to contest with well into the future. I think the ideas we’re tossing around formulates an inviting, fertile ground for new contesters just coming into ham radio and contesting for the first time. Out of this, I hope we discover and create novel in-roads for normies to get into the next level. Current young contesters may think it’s great right now, because it is, but you are a lucky few who had some kind of magical unmatched personal dedication, brilliant elmering, ham family, or just ADHD hyperfocus (it me) to get hooked for life. And i’m v proud of that. But without pushing for some kind of modern, mainstream aligned ideas, environments, activities, overlays, categories, and just straight up new stuff, radiosport will stagnate as the VAST BULK of contesters pass away, out leaving behind a fraction of today’s young contesters for tomorrow. That’s facts based on statistical projections based on numerous demographic surveys and data, and you can see it plainly in Craig’s K9CT interview. So as content creators, visionaries, and rabblerousers, we’re gonna go in hot and heavy, get complainy, and poke at the hornet’s nest to bring this to the light throughout the ham community to find people interested in making it a thing, only to see if it’s a thing. Might want to work on the delivery, but the point stands.

I also think we are miscommunicating the intent of radiosport2.0 becasuse of all the “reeeeee your killing my contests get off my lawnnnn nothing is wrong why do this nooo reeee” type comments . and I don’t disagree there might be some misinformation, or really just ignorance and misremembering on our (my lol) part. There’s also the weirdness of the K9CT folks, ARRL/CAC people, and log developers keeping their radio sport 2.0 plans close to their chest (compared to us who are baring it all and at least showing somebody is out there thinking “it would be cool if…”in hopes we can garner some grassroots perturbations in the community and do something cool for the sake of the fun of it, and maybe for the sake of the hobby). But imagine things like saving the contest committee 100 hours out of their thousands to check logs by, i dunno, posting every log submission and qsordr capture carte blanche to an academic database and letting the database wizards poke at it to see how close their solutions come to the traditional methods? Or giving those connected to the internet an opt-in option to cryptographically sign their QSOs that get posted to a blockchain ledger as a smart contract for realtime, verifiable adjudication (and figure it’s vulnerabilities to nefarious players? Or let there be a new button in their log’s score reporting menu that says “send to realtime ledger” or “report [entire QSO/band-mode/freq/rotator] data to blahblahblah db/server” for beta testers and early adopters to futz with while also not ruining or even remotely changing their experience as a contester doing a contest – they’ll still be valid (depending on what they’re opting in to send they might need to change to a different category e.g. CQWW Explorer), they’ll still submit a cabrillo, they’ll get a real score in whenever time, meanwhile 99% of people probably won’t notice that button until HRCC hosts a livestream of a radiosport tournament battle royale with your hosts Kyle AA0Z and Sterling N0SSC, backed up by your experts in the field N0AX and N6MJ – all enabled by that button, only just now realizing they too can get in on that action ALL THE WHILE on the air it just sounds like regular contesters contesting; just with more of them doing this goofy livestreamed tournament thing.

And I’m not a “*real*” contester. I don’t put up high scores on 3830 because I cannot do a 24/36/48 hr contest. I go to N0AX/W0ECC/W0EEE, sit down for 2 hours, do my 200-300Q/hr rate, let the pile die, and give up for a while with a beer and a chat with the other’s on the bench, and come back at 4am when the grey line is approaching to listen to the world turn from 160m and 10m because that shit is cool. I don’t even have HF at home, and I don’t have the time to set up remote stations and be a basement dweller for a whole weekend. And I have gone a loooong time since I had my butt in a chair for more than a few hours that wasn’t at my day job. But I’ve worked at least 2 or 3 big contests every year since I was 15 years old, I’ve won plaques and paper as a sad teenage G5RV owner in nowhere Missouri, i’ve played in sweeps every year except one (not under my own callsign typically – usually under N0AX, W0ECC, and W0EEE), I drop in at random field day sites and fire through 100 QSOs in half an hour and disappear, and I had elmers like N0AX, Ed K0KL (SK), K0ZT (SK) K0ZH and the WA0FYA Zerobeaters ARC, W0EEE alumni, and K3LR and the Contest University crew who let me in free for like 3 years straight because I was the only one without gray hair. I really love contesting – it’s my favorite part of ham radio. And now as a 32 year old geezer, I do want something I can do in my tidbits of free time, that is just a bit different than a CWT or WWSAC, that isn’t just a 2 hour stint on a major contest – i want to be competitive and be ranked and scored with a pool of other contesters. I want team deathmatch, CTF, in-game perks/power-ups/items, and matchmaking lobbies. I think there’s an untapped reserve of potential new hams that would also be into that kind of radiosport. I don’t want the existing contests or methodologies to die or change, but as they stand now – as they have forever ago and forever on — are excellent grounds for trying out these new ideas unbeknownst to guys like VP5M with barely enough bandwidth for the cluster [thanks connor], the off-grid pacific islanders, africans, antarctic researchers, nordic polar bears all who make CQWW/WPX & IARUHF so much fun, or folks who just don’t do the internet and log with paper. Coexistance is a requirement, and so is the longevity of our hobby.

Tldr I want to play ham radio when I’m retired (25-30 years from now lol) so I have some ideas.

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a few edits were made for profanity, clarification, correction to K0ZH’s call.

thanks W4IPC and KG5XR for inspo and AA0Z for sticking his neck out to get these ideas on the cutting room floor

73 🛌

The Future of Amateur Radio IS with our youth!!!

The Future of Amateur Radio IS with our youth! But lets think about what youth is for a second, and give done credit for those who are not so youthful…

In response to a The Future of Amateur Radio is with our youth . . . not! by Joe Cupano, NE2Z (because his wordpress doesn’t allow comments, unless you’re logged in as admin to his site, lol.

To that headline, I say, the Future of Amateur Radio IS with our youth!

But youth is relative. Sure, there is a definition of youth, but I argue that youth in ham radio must take it’s aged demographic into consideration. The average ham (according to ARRL/NCJ and OFCOM data) is…old. The UK its over 71, the ARRL/NCJ is 70. So what is youth relative to 70 years old? What would at 70 year old tell you?

They would say to almost everyone younger than then, even a 50 year old, that they’re still young!

But that begs the question: what is old? Unfortunately, “old” has a very negative connotation (cranky, curmudgeonly, stinky, mean, burdensome, stubborn, and tech illiterate) while the positives (wise, elder, experienced, aged (like a fine wine or whisky), and virtuous) are often ignored.

Simply put, old is not young. And based on our relativity to ham radio, and removing as much connotation and subjectivity as possible, old is aged beyond that of the average ham radio licensee, which is about 70.

Lets actually read the post and not jump to conclusions about the title (can’t begin to tell you how much that happens on my blog. If you’re a reader of n0ssc.com I probably don’t have to remind you that Millennials Are Killing Ham Radio, but maybe I should have put a “…NOT” in that headline🙃).

Joe asks,

How many times have you seen the messaging in Amateur Radio that it’s future is with the youth and how the Amateur Radio community should engage them in teaching or demonstrating technology to them?

It’s bullshit!

It’s bullshit because he believes there is a double standard (I guess) where youth are failing to show hams how to use modern technology like cellphones, social media, maker tech, and videoconferencing, and that youth have surpassed the ham radio community in technology engagement.

I’ve mulled that one over.

It must be a symptom of his tunnel vision, or something, but I fail to see both the double standard, and the fact that young people aren’t teaching old people (and in Joe’s case, specifically hams) how to use tech. This, I think, is bullshit, because old folks are using tech, and using it well enough to present themselves on Zoom meetings, create and comment on Facebook posts, make YouTube videos of their ham radio fun (some pretty great!) and even make 3D printed thingies – THANKS ENTIRELY to…

Gotcha! You thought I was gonna say youth there, didn’t you?

First of all, the fact that old people still, in fact, have a brain and can still learn, often by themselves, nullifies Joe’s premise, but secondly, people who have either helped them learn (I currently don’t know a young ham who isn’t tech support for their grandma), or have made tech generally as accessible as possible for people of all ages and levels of technology literacy in the first place. And some of those helpful people happen to be young. Some are old, too. But what’s your point, Joe?

Joe mentions the overlooked “middle child” of generations – Millennials and GenXers (did I tell you Millennials Are Killing Ham Radio?) but I feel he left his point hanging there, but contextually, I assume he believes the reins of ham radio is in their hands but doesn’t consider those people “young.” I believe this to be true, but it’s just as important to bring ham radio into the minds and hands of GenX and Millennials as it is for GenZ, and those after that when they come of age, for the same reason why it’s of paramount importance (not to mention highly desirable) to have diversity in any community of peoples.

But maybe, ham radio has always been an old person’s hobby, and that’s just the way it is. Hiram Percy Maxim apparently stated that the age of hams was a problem…in 1900s (citation needed…someone told this to me at W4DXCC and I’ve not found a source, but I believe it!)

Even if that’s the case, imagine my disappointment when the old guard dies away without doing anything to bring new blood into ham radio, resulting in international amateur radio spectrum reallocation, resulting in no ham radio for me when I get to be old. That would suck, and that’s why I am the IARU R2 Liasion for Youth and a co-founder of Youth on the Air, and a die-hard evangelist for this hobby. I don’t have the time in my 20s and 30s to operate every day, go on mega DXpeditions, contest for 48 hours straight for 12 weekends out of the year and more, and win WRTC, because I’m working over full time while still having a life with my wife, dog and two cats, friends, and family, with the world to still see. I want ham radio to still exist when I retire, dammit!

(and also to give back to the community by making ham radio a valuable STEM sandbox for young people, as it did for me!)

So I will blog during my lunch hours, I’ll travel to a hamfest to give a talk a few times a year, and I’ll join a club’s zoom to help promote youth in ham radio. What are you doing to keep ham radio existing in perpetuity?

If anything, just get on the air!

Thoughts on the Saturation of Ham Radio YouTube

Author's note: I use - and  this is a real quote from an angry reader - the language of the devil that I should be ashamed of using - in this post. Steer clear if you're offended by profanity. If you don't, and you message me about it, I'm just going to ignore it like I've ignored the other 12 messages I've gotten since publishing...smh.

I…uh…haven’t blogged in a long time.

How have you all been?

I have been very busy. I’m on a plane so I found time to write a thing I’ve been thinking about.

I was watching YouTube (I watch a lot of YouTube) and I scrolled past a video with hardly any views, a creator with not many subs, and a title and thumbnail that wasn’t very attention-getting. However, something in my head just said give it a chance.

Update: unfortunately, the video that was posted here was removed by its creator. I assume he received a lot of backlash from it and subsequent critical videos he made and removed his videos from the internet. The video highlighted ham radio "poseurs" who post videos on YouTube in order to gain an audience and views, ONLY to gain an audience and views. In other words, their motivations are selfish, wherein the creator seeks attention with drama and unsubstantiated clickbait, rather than altruistic (seeking to share knowledge or a worthwhile experience) or generally neutral.

First of all, poseurs isn’t a misspelling; I thought it was, but turns out it’s just another way to spell posers. In my middle and high school, posers were people who posed as people who they weren’t. Everyone was one at some point, unless you were popular. I was a goth poser, an emo poser, a nerd poser…point was that I didn’t really fit in for a while. I struggled to find my friends until I hit a wall, got depressed, and…joined the high school marching band lol. And at some point I became a ham, and the rest was history.

Randon, KN4YRM, actually had a good point in the video. There is a new kind of poser in the ham radio YouTube space, and it’s causing problems for seekers of amateur radio knowledge on the platform and, in my opinion, ham radio in general.

As we may or may not be aware, ham radio, in general, has a significant demographic cliff ahead of itself. And if nothing is done to address that cliff, the hobby (and service) will die. One of the best “boots on the ground” are the growing body of Ham Radio YouTube Creators (a.k.a. HamTubers). They are bringing amateur radio to a whole brand new audience and generation of hams right into their phones and devices.

More generally, YouTube posers (I like to call them douchetubers) are very common on the platform. These aren’t the kind of poser I remember in middle school. Instead of being a wayward teen looking for their place in the world, the YouTube posers he’s referring to are a sort of morally bankrupt opportunistic fame chaser, and in this case, they’ve coalesced upon ham radio. Maybe they really are wayward souls, and deep down are desperate to find a hobby or an ingroup to call home, but I’m not so sure after knowing and talking with some over the last few years.

Douchetubers are sort of an indicator species. They are proof that the OG YouTubers are doing something right insofar that they have made their topic become so mainstream that it is now profitable for the douchetubers to swoop in, make effortless superficial unboxing videos, paid reviews of cool gear and services they didn’t buy or even use, without ever actually participating in the vocation that supports the wares they are peddling, while utilizing skills and techniques that are optimized for The Algorithm – high-energy thumbnails, click-bait titles, precise ad placement, belaboring the point (or never even getting to it) to increase watch time, consistent scheduling, optimized viewer retention and engagement, and the oh so beloved “LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE” call outs.

And if that wasn’t enough, they will even start pointless drama and consternation (sometimes conspiratorially coordinated) with other douchetubers and OGs just to pump up activity and engagement so that the YouTube algorithm catches on – and that is a tried and true tool used by douchetubers the world around. KSI, Logan Paul, Pewdiepie, GradeAunderA are a few that come to mind that all bickered about each other while they all enjoyed the gains due to polarization.

In ham radio world, these are the youtubers who make videos just for the clout, influence, or revenue – without ever hitting a PTT button, melting a single blob of solder, or sharing a conversation with experienced hams and elmers – essentially doing nothing to show or share their true passion for the hobby, because they really have none, or, what passion they did have became usurped by the chase for clout (views, likes, and influencing power) and perhaps advertising revenue (but as someone who receives advertising revenue and knows people in the ham radio YouTube space that do, it isn’t very much).

This is especially becoming apparent in the preparedness realm. PrepTube is chock full of douchetubers who have capitalized on right-wing FUD, civil distress, and the deluge of climate change induced disasters by performing paid gear reviews of things like cheap Chinese ham radios to use when SHTF, and making ill-informed recommendations to their audience that we hams scoff at. Buy a Baofeng and put it in an ammo box? Do you even know how to program those things?

But, good for ham radio! Right? Well, yes and no.

Yes, because douchetubers have an incredible talent at putting information in front of lots and lots of eyeballs. Because ham radio is on a demographic cliff, the exposure they are helping create by making YouTube videos that are highly optimized to attract larger audiences and make revenue is a net good thing for ham radio since YouTube is a perpetual audience of billions and billions of people, especially youth.

On the other hand, it’s bad for a few reasons:

  1. They are really bad at sharing their passion for amateur radio, such that they encourage their audience to watch more of them on YouTube, instead of play more radio themselves.
  2. They are really bad at promoting the hobby (either as a hobby or a service) to the public in general. Their superficial view of it to the masses are…
  3. …diluting the technical breadth and depth of amateur radio (in other words, they are promoting unskilled and untrained appliance operators, especially in preparedness communities.
  4. Randon’s point – it saturates the YouTube ham radio space making it way harder for hams and hams-to-be to find useful, helpful information, and to support legit non-douche YouTube elmers.

What it means for the OG youtubers is that they need to step up their game to compete for views. This brings the playing field back into their favor, at the expense of sounding like a douchetuber themself. “SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON” is a common phrase among all of us now, because non-DoucheTubers still need to inform their audience that if they don’t like and subscribe, then videos made by douchtubers of low quality and high viewing rates will eventually overpower even the best creations from the most morally enriched and didactic creators – people like Dave Casler KE0OG, Ham Radio Crash Course, Mr. Carlson’s Lab, KM4ACK, Ham Radio 2.0, K8MRD, K6ARK, Signal Path Blog, K5ATA, TheSmokinApe, W2AEW, just to name a few…they all have to compete with the scum of the YouTube earth with the same techniques they do.

Great content does not automatically mean more viewers. Just ask how many times I’ve given presentations on youth in ham radio to near-empty rooms and worked my butt off on videos for all of a few hundred views (while 5 of my top ten videos are awful, unscripted, seat of the pants reviews of popular gear…seriously I still think my Solar Eclipse QSO party video was the moment when I proved to myself I could tell a Neistat-style story through video, but it’s only got 200 or so views despite it being one of my hardest videos to make.)

And the same is true for many hobbies; I’ve seen it happen with flying quadcopters over the last 7 years, and I’ve seen it happen with disc golf over the last year, where douchetubers will review a disc or gear sent to them from Chinese companies without even knowing what the ratings on it mean, never admitting to never having actually thrown a disc in their life, just because so many eyeballs are looking for that information out there, and they have a matching charismatic ability to disseminate useless information while maintaining an audience of people willing to give them their attention.

I would like to add, that while douche-HamTubers are starting to oversaturate the YouTube ham radio space with bad content, that there is no shortage of brilliant didactic (I love that word) ham creators making excellent videos and actually engaging with their passions and audiences while sharing knowledge in a fruitful manner that is well in alignment with the spirit of amateur radio. I wish that wasn’t discouraging to anybody wishing to make videos on YouTube (I had just given a talk to W4DXCC to promote everyone with a smartphone to give it a shot!), but I know that to be true as well.

Randon’s advice to spin the dial works here just as well as it works on the bands. Just spin the dial, and give your attention to those who really deserve it.

Here’s a looooong list of ham radio YouTubers curated by Kyle AA0Z. Do you see any douchetubers on this list? Or is there anyone missing that should be on here? Let us know!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BiqqCvRnzNx-iuH9R5ghyfRFomOWkh59zuZ6OrWy7Is/edit?usp=sharing